Sermon Brief
Date Written: January 21, 2011
Date Preached: January 23, 2011
Where Preached: OPBC (AM)
Sermon Details:
Series Title: Falling in Love With Jesus
Sermon Title: How Does Jesus Love Us?
Sermon Text: John 3:14-17 [ESV]
Introduction:
I love you! These are 3 words that we all long to hear. Can you remember when you first heard these words? I am sure that it was when you were a small child and your parents said them to you…over and over again. The next time you probably heard it was that puppy love you experienced in Jr. High or sometime around that for most of us, when the special someone we liked shared their feelings with us!
That 1st puppy love was all gushy and sweet, but many of us found it to be a fleeting feeling… an empty emotion that had no substance and after a short period of time it was GONE!
But the love you rec’d from your parents was much different because they showed it by taking care of you, feeding you, giving you a place to live, and providing for your basic needs, and YES they even disciplined you when you needed it… all because they loved you.
The sad part of this comparison is that so many of us find that 1st puppy love to be the more exciting event in our lives even though, it was not lasting. It was different, it was exciting, it was flashy, it was NEW, but it did not last. However, we find ourselves trying to relive it over and over again.
We find it more flashy and exciting than the love we rec’d from our parents mainly because our parents’ love was something reliable, something predictable, something that was stable and lasting. And as sad as it is to say, it bores most of us… it’s routine… it’s everyday… it becomes mundane to us, even though it is a very real, true, and faithful love!
This morning I want us to make a comparison of this sort, but from the spiritual realm. You see, many of us can remember when the world first told us that it loved us - that time when temptation came our way, when we saw something we wanted and reached out for it… when we took hold of it, it was exciting, it was flashy, it was new… but it did not take us long to see that it was not something that was going to last! But, so many of us keep trying to relive it, retrieve it and revive it.
The world told us it loved us by showing us what we wanted to see, by promising us what we wanted to hear, but ultimately by NOT meeting that promise. The love of the world is a fleeting thing that can never be trusted, but we find ourselves throwing our trust and affection that way and being hurt and beaten down because of it!
However, when we look at God, we see a much different picture. God has told us that He loved us… God has made it evident in His Word, but also in ways that we can hold onto… ways that are concrete and stable and do not fade away! God’s love does not tells us what we want to hear… but it provides for us what we NEED to know! God’s love not only tells us, but it shows us in the person of Jesus Christ!
This morning I want us to look at 4 verses from John 3 and I want us to look at just how God loves us…
14 …as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him…
First – God’s Love Reaches FOR us – v.14
14 …as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
In this verse Jesus is recounting the Israelites journey in the wilderness when they were disobedient and facing destruction…We can read about this story in Numbers 21:9… 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
The Israelites had been delivered from Egypt by God, but now they had begun to complain that God was mistreating them, and they were grumbling and complaining against God…They did not trust God, they wanted things their way and they began to speak out against Moses and against God.
God was angered by the attitude of their hearts and He sent judgment upon them in the form of poisonous snakes. These snakes were biting people and people were dying… this was a judgment from God against His people for their bitter hearts.
Right away the people cried out to Moses for mercy and began to repent. Moses prayed to God and God told Moses to fashion a serpent out of bronze and put it on a long standard (pole) and go to the center of the encampment… and there he was to raise it to the sky, so all the camp could see it.
God told Moses to tell the people, everyone who simply LOOKS at the serpent on the standard will be saved! He did not say they had to repent, he did not say they had to change, all God told them was to LOOK upon the serpent on the pole, and they would experience a healing and be saved!
However those who refused to look at the standard, God said they would die! So Moses did what God said, and he told the people what God had ordered, and just as God had promised… all who looked upon the standard were saved and those who refused to look… they died.
Even though the hearts of these people were calloused and disobedient, He was gracious and reached down in love to offer forgiveness and deliverance to the people willing listen to Him that day… God’s judgment was sufficient and they would have died, but God’s love and mercy intervened on their behalf to save them!
What Jesus is saying here in v.14 is that that is what the situation in the world is like… humanity is at the same point that the children of Israel were… God has time and time again tried to reach them thru the prophets and the Law but they have chosen to do things their way and they live their lives disobedient to God and their attitude is all about themselves. Jesus is telling Nicodemous that God’s judgment is coming, but there will be a standard to which all people can come to… to be saved and delivered from the judgment of God… that standard will be Jesus Christ!
Jesus clarifies this statement later in His ministry as we read in John 8:28 [ESV]
28So Jesus said to them, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.
Again later in John 12 there were some Greeks who wanted to see Jesus and Jesus uses this as an opportunity to reveal to these men AND His disciples the power and glory of God.
He begins to speak of what is to come and there is a voice from Heaven that speaks… the crowd is awestruck and Jesus tells them, that voice was NOT for me, but it was for your sake… so that you would understand who I am and what my mission is… Jesus said it like this…
…"This voice has come for your sake, not mine. 31Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." 33He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.
So we can see that here in v. 14, Jesus was predicting His death on the Cross, where He would be lifted up on the Cross to die… and all who looked to that sacrifice and all who believed in it would be saved. This was Jesus proclaiming that God’s love had sent Him and He was part of a loving God’s plan to save humanity…
But when we look at God from the very beginning of creation, we can see that God’s love has always been a love that reached out! When Adam and Eve were placed in the Paradise we know as Eden, and every day God would reach out to them and commune with them in the cool of the day…
When Adam and Eve fell to the temptation of Satan, God’s judgment was there and they were expelled from the garden and the stain of sin was upon them… BUT we can also see that God’s love was there to reach out and provide clothing and a plan for them as they left the garden and even though it seems as if God was harsh… God’s redemption plan was in place… God could have simply destroyed Adam and Eve, but instead, He gave them an option… live for Him outside of paradise.
We see where God reached down in love and called Abram out of his homeland to create a nation that would be His chosen nation… chosen people. God made a covenant with this nation, first thru Abraham, then thru Isaac, then thru Jacob, and ultimately thru Moses… that He would be their God and love them and deliver them if they would serve Him. God reached out to the Hebrew nation with His love… but it was not just to bless the Hebrew nation.
But we find that when God blessed the Hebrew nation with His covenant with Abraham, it was so that this nation, the chosen people of God, would be a blessing to ALL the nations of the world… thus spreading God’s love… God’s covenant to ALL the nations of the world.
Here in v.14 we find Jesus promising God’s love of redemption through His death on the Cross… God’s love has been reaching out to His creation since the dawn of Creation. In His love He created us and in His love He offers us deliverance…
God’s love has always reached out TO us, but that is not all, we can also see here in these verses that…
Second – God’s Love Provides FOR us – v.15
15 that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.
There is a purpose for Jesus… and Jesus did not want Nicodemus to misunderstand what that purpose was…
You see the teaching of the Law by the rabbis of the day was that the Messiah was coming, and that the Messiah would deliver Israel and throw off oppression and would reestablish the kingdom of Israel to its former glory…
This is how Nicodemus would have understood the concept or the person of the Messiah. Nicodemus came to Jesus praising Him and the implication here is that Nicodemus believed that Jesus WAS the Messiah… but HIS view of the Messiah, and Jesus wanted to make sure that He understood what He was telling him.
So here in v.15 Jesus clarifies the meaning of His mission… it was a spiritual mission! God was REACHING out for humanity with His love, AND that He was going to PROVIDE deliverance for humanity with that love…
Because of sin, humanity had lost its communion with the Creator and Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s plan for restoring that lost communion… Jesus was the bridge that would cross the great divide of sin… reaching out from perfection into a lost and sinful world, God’s love sent Jesus to provide a way to know Him again!
What does this mean for us today? After all we are living in a much different time. We are living in a different culture! How does this apply to us…
No matter where we are on the planet… no matter WHEN we live on this planet… there is one thing that is a constant with ALL of humanity, and that is we are sinners. We seek to please ourselves, we seek to gain OUR pleasure and desire, and we do NOT seek God’s desire. We seek to travel OUR path and our path is not the path God has chosen or desires…
That is the very definition of sin… this is what happened in the Garden and has continued in humanity to this day… this is why we are separated from God. Jesus came out of the love of God to bridge that gap… to restore that relationship, but it is for only those who will accept it… if you refuse to look to Jesus… if you refuse to accept Jesus… you will not receive what Jesus came to bring…
We see that God’s love reaches out for us…
We can also see that God’s love provides deliverance for us…
…but my final point this morning is that I want us to see that God’s love that reaches out for us… and God’s love that provides deliverance for us…
That love is wrapped up exclusively in ONE person…
God’s Love is Jesus – v.16-17
16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him…
Jesus was sent by the Father so that we could know salvation and deliverance… that salvation and deliverance that comes ONLY in Jesus Christ! And that deliverance Jesus brings is FIRM evidence of God’s love for us!
There are so many people today who either do not believe in God or who believe in God but curse Him as being a deity that does not care… that is cruel… People blame God for all the ills of the world, all the problems of life, all the things that have happened to them and against them…
How can a loving God allow such horrible things to happen? Disease, famine, drought, murder, genocide, deformity, and many other issues that plague our world. And I will say that these are things that have troubled many of us since the dawn of time itself… why, is a question that we ask all the time.
I will be the first person to tell you that I don’t claim to have all the information about God… I don’t claim to understand what is going on in this world, but I do understand who I am! I do understand humanity.
And when we read Scripture we find that we are created by a loving God who made us in His image and made us with a freedom of will… we are created with the freedom of choosing our own path. In God’s sovereignty He wishes us to choose HIM, but He will not force that choice upon us…
When Adam and Eve chose to sin in the Garden, sin entered into the world, and when sin entered into the world, so did death, disease, sickness, poverty, famine, pestilence… and any other malady and tragedy that you can imagine. What I am saying is that God did not WISH for these things to come into the world, but humanity has chosen its path and that path brings these things into our lives…
Another thing is that Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden was not a sin that only affected them, but it affected ALL who were to come after them… We are born into sin because of their choice… likewise when we make the choice to sin, our decision is not in a vacuum either… it affects those around us and those who we least expect!
Because of sin, all the evils of this world are able to continue to exist and even prosper… I have heard many say things like, “If God were a loving God He would just fix all these things…” but when God created us with a choice, He understood that we would choose the wrong… and He understood the consequences of us choosing the wrong…
Jesus is God’s answer to our choosing the wrong… Jesus is God’s love revealed to us… it is God’s desire for us to CHOOSE Him. Jesus came to reveal the love of God so that we would choose Him and gain the communion we have lost and the eternal life He has promised…
I can’t tell you why the evil things of this world continue to harass and hurt us, but I can tell you that God loves you and has made a way for you to know Him and experience the joy that only He can bring… He can bring joy into our lives even in the midst of all the evil and tragedy of this world! But here is the picture you must look at… like the Israelites who were dying because of the snakes biting them…
They probably did not understand WHY… but what they did know is that God provided a way for salvation… a way for deliverance… and all who looked upon that way… all who accepted that way were saved!
Today you may not be able to answer the why question, but today you can know this for a fact, God DOES care, God does love you! God has provided a way of deliverance from this world and all of its evils and all of its sorrow… That way is Jesus
Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except through Me!”
God provided a way… that way is very narrow… that way is Jesus! Jesus is the full revelation of God’s love for you today… Jesus is the answer for your sorrow, for your pain, for your sin… I call on you to come to Jesus and know the deliverance that God has provided… LOOK to Jesus and believe today and know the salvation He brings!
As Steven comes to lead us… I call on you to surrender your heart to Him today. Come and know His salvation…come and experience the love of God as God intended! Come as we begin to sing….
